Automotive Updates - 25th June 2014

•  In a major relief to the automobile industry, finance minister Arun Jaitley extended the excise duty cuts that were implemented by the UPA government until December 31. The reductions were set to expire on June 30.Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers deputy director general Sugato Sen welcomed the move."This is a great relief for the automobile manufacturers and we hope this will help us maintain the positive momentum that the industry saw last months," he said.

• Japanese auto giant Toyota will start selling its first fuel cell sedan this financial year, with a price tag of around 7 million yen ($70,000), the company announced Wednesday.The vehicles will be rolled out by March and beyond the home market during the summer of 2015, it said, in a move that will see the environmentally friendly cars available in the United States and Europe.

• The new version of Opel's best-selling Corsa car will arrive in European showrooms at the end of 2014, it said on Tuesday, as General Motors seeks to return its second-largest brand to profitability.

• AMW today announced that the company had entered into an agreement with L & T Finance to provide retail financing options for its range of medium and heavy haulage vehicles and tippers. 

• The West Bengal government is contemplating introducing green taxis in the metropolis."We are planning to introduce the first four seater electric car as city cab strictly meant for city limits including Rajarhat and Salt Lake," state Transport minister Madan Mitra said here today after reviewing the car."We are thinking of naming this as 'city cab' and it will be a no refusal cab service," he added.

• Globally, Honda Motors is recalling about 2 million vehicles manufactured between August 2000 and December 2005 for a possible fault with the airbags. The recall affects the Honda Accord, CR-V and Jazz. A report on the Economic Times states that the Accord sold in India from 2001 to 2005 (Sixth and Seventh generation models) is part of the affected cars.

• A recent report on Live Mint newspaper proposes that Honda Cars India is planning an investment of Rs.4,000 crore to build an automobile manufacturing plant at Vithalapur in Gujarat. Honda’s third factory in the country (following the establishments in Greater Noida and Rajasthan that leave it with a capacity of 240k cars per annum today) would have an annual capacity of 100k-125k cars a year.In February this year, Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India Pvt. Ltd said it had acquired 100 hectares of land in Vithalapur for a new INR 1,100-crore production unit that comes on stream in 2016.

• AMW Motors Ltd has entered into an agreement with L&T Finance to provide competitive retail financing options for its range of medium and heavy haulage vehicles and tippers. The pact will help provide loans at attractive rates for all classes of commercial vehicle operators, including retail customers and will be available across the range of AMW vehicles such as tippers, the new AMW haulage range and other special purpose vehicles. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed today by A Ramasubramanian, president, AMW Motors, and G C Rangan, COO, L&T Finance.

• French automaker Renault launched the Duster compact SUV in 2010 under Dacia badge. This model has been doing tremendous business for the car manufacturer as the company managed to sell over 1 million Dusters worldwide. According to French media, the next generation Duster will go on sale in 2017.

•  image from wikipedia